I don’t have too many complaints
with how my life has progressed thus far. I have a
lovely wife, an amazing new son and a career that I
can be proud of. I achieved a life goal by making it
to the Broadway stage and I’ve gotten the opportunity
to work with some of the biggest names in the world
of theater… but it’s not enough. There
are still a few things I’d like to do.
My wife believes that you have to tell the universe
what you want before it can ever happen. My mom prays
to God and the saints to effect change. I guess in
both cases what they’re doing is creating a little
cosmic buzz; a pebble tossed into the sea of time in
the hopes that it will eventually cause a tidal wave
of results.
So here’s one of my pebbles: I’d like to
appear on an original cast recording. Alright God,
universe, theater gnomes, whomever; please get to work
on making that happen for me. Thanks.
I’ve always wanted to appear on a cast album.
The great classic cast albums were my first connection
to Broadway. I’d go to the library, check out
Stanley Richards’ Ten Great Musicals of the American
Theatre and also take out an LP of one of the shows
featured in those pages. I’d read the plays until
I came to a song, then I’d flip on the stereo
and listen to how the song fit into the show.
I’d check out the photos on the cast album or
those provided in the book to get a feel for how things
looked on stage but for the most part I had to fill
in the gaps with my imagination. The experience was
exhilarating and frustrating at the same time.
My limited knowledge and experience led my imaginings
to look a lot like my hometown. A Scottish village
that appears only once every hundred years took on
the shape of one of the local parks, the streets of
New York being roamed by the Jets and the Sharks looked
an awful lot like the playground of my elementary school
and Anatevka bore a striking resemblance to my cousins’ dairy
farm.
And yet when the strains of Lerner and Loewe, Bernstein
and Sondheim and Bock and Harnick poured out of the
speakers of the family’s hi-fi, even those commonplace
locales somehow took on a richness and depth that I
had never before imagined.
I love cast albums, I can’t help it. My love
for them has led me to amass a collection of over 900
of them. And while they can’t all be Rodgers
and Hammerstein, I enjoy every single one. I even enjoy
the ones that make you ask out loud, “What were
they thinking?”
For the sake of full disclosure and in an effort to
not upset God and/or the universe I have to admit that
technically I have already appeared on a cast album.
I sang a song on the album of a show that I had been
in Off-Broadway. The show had a subsequent production
after the one in which I appeared. That was the cast
that made the album. But something got screwed up with
one of the recording’s tracks and the composer
asked me to come into the studio and redo the number.
I did just that and to date that is my one and only
cast album appearance. I don’t count it because
I wasn’t really supposed to be on the album and
it was just the one number.
I’ve come close a couple of other times as well.
I’ve done readings of shows and appeared on recordings
that were made to promote those shows but I’ve
never actually made it onto any of the original cast
albums. I’ve also performed in shows where there
were rumors of recording a cast album of the production
but those rumors never materialized.
But soon that will all change because now I’ve
told the universe and said my prayers and tossed my
pebble. Now it’s just a matter of time until
that tidal wave of cast recordings bearing my name
comes crashing into a record store near you.
I can’t tell you exactly how soon it might happen.
God and the universe seem to work on a slightly different
timetable than my own. ‘Til then I guess I’ll
just have to bide my time listening to, what else,
cast albums.
